


Smear of Painted Sky

by GoldenClover



Category: Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 12:32:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8285995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenClover/pseuds/GoldenClover
Summary: The world is like a droplet of sunshine this morning. Amy’s sitting in the garden and even now, with her hat pulled low over her eyes and her head ducked down, the sky is trying to paint her gold. But she’s an artist, not the sky.Or she might have been once.





	

The world is like a droplet of sunshine this morning. Amy’s sitting in the garden and even now, with her hat pulled low over her eyes and her head ducked down, the sky is trying to paint her gold. But  _ she’s _ an artist,  _ not _ the sky.

Or she might have been once.

Because the little girl who was going to be an artist never really died, and when Amy looks at the sky, she thinks maybe it looks a little bit like the way paint smears together on a pallet - all messy and splotchy and beautiful. Because messy paint used to mean a finished painting, but today messy paint just means a painting she’ll never paint.

That, Amy realizes, is her own personal tragedy.   


She never opened the door to her castle in the sky. 

It’s still sitting up there somewhere among the clouds, but it’s a little bit farther than it used to be and the unused brushes and easels are getting awfully lonely up there. The corners are hoarding dust like it’s going out of style and the carpet is crumpled with the footsteps Amy will never take on it, because she chose a different castle. 

And the thing is, the one she chose  _ is _ a castle in the sky - just not hers.

Amy stole somebody’s castle in the sky, and somebody stole hers.

She’s not angry at the thief, because they probably searched for the key harder than she did - but a little part of Amy will never not be bitter. A piece of Amy knew even as a little girl that she would never find the key to her castle. She was always going to be somebody’s lace-wearing mother.   


But Amy will always wish she was was somebody’s lace-wearing artist.

Somebody else is an artist, somewhere in France or somewhere in Italy, because Amy stole Laurie from them so they stole her paint from her. An eye for an eye, but Amy is still Amy and she doesn’t want them to get the eye - she wants  _ both  _ eyes.

She wants her paint and her statues and her little clay darlings, but she wants Laurie too.

And the sky isn’t so much an oil painting now - it’s too mean and it’s too bright for that. No, Amy thinks as she stands up with a rustle of skirts (no clatter of brushes, no crinkle of paper), the sky is an empty paint pallet.


End file.
